{"id":5146,"date":"2015-09-07T09:53:36","date_gmt":"2015-09-07T09:53:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ballymenachamber.co.uk\/?p=5146"},"modified":"2015-09-07T09:55:08","modified_gmt":"2015-09-07T09:55:08","slug":"minister-bell-speaks-at-chamber-breakfast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ballymenachamber.co.uk\/?p=5146","title":{"rendered":"Minister Bell Speaks at Chamber Breakfast"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>DETI Minister Jonathan Bell was the guest speaker at the Chamber\u2019s Autumn Business Breakfast in the Adair Arms Hotel.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In his speech he congratulated Ballymena on being the first town in Northern Ireland to implement a BID. He also highlighted a number of initiatives being driven by his Department to strengthen and develop the economy. These included the Small Business Loan and the Growth Fund, the Small Business Rate Relief Scheme and the non- domestic Empty Property Relief Scheme .He also pointed out that fast, reliable and robust telecommunications are essential. He stated that whilst the Northern Ireland telecommunications structure was well ahead of most of the United Kingdom and Europe there was still scope for further improvement.<\/p>\n<p>He also said that Tourism NI was committed to supporting events, both home grown and international, in Northern Ireland and Mid and East Antrim Borough. The international events in particular drew huge television coverage.<\/p>\n<p>Chamber would like to thank Minister Bell for taking time out of his busy schedule to speak at the breakfast.<\/p>\n<h4><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-5147\" title=\"MNSTR_BELL_STORY\" src=\"http:\/\/ballymenachamber.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/MNSTR_BELL_STORY.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"679\" height=\"479\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ballymenachamber.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/MNSTR_BELL_STORY.jpg 679w, https:\/\/ballymenachamber.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/MNSTR_BELL_STORY-300x211.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 679px) 100vw, 679px\" \/><\/h4>\n<h6>Photo L-R Front Row: Mayor Billy Ashe, Chamber President Alan Stewart, Minister Jonathan Bell MLA and Cllr. Audrey Wales MBE<\/h6>\n<h6>Back Row: Chamber Members Ronan McCann, Eugene McKeever MBE and David Moore<\/h6>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DETI Minister Jonathan Bell was the guest speaker at the Chamber\u2019s Autumn Business Breakfast in the Adair Arms Hotel.\u00a0 In his speech he congratulated Ballymena on being the first town in Northern Ireland to implement a BID. He also highlighted a number of initiatives being driven by his Department to strengthen and develop the economy. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5150,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[28,36,48,12],"class_list":["post-5146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","tag-busines-breakfast","tag-events","tag-latest-news","tag-recent-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ballymenachamber.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5146"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ballymenachamber.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ballymenachamber.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ballymenachamber.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ballymenachamber.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5146"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ballymenachamber.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5151,"href":"https:\/\/ballymenachamber.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5146\/revisions\/5151"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ballymenachamber.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ballymenachamber.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ballymenachamber.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ballymenachamber.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}